Orrin Hatch: Poor People Should Take Responsibility

In the latest example of the GOP’s eagerness to throw working families under the bus to avoid placing even the slightest burden on the wealthy and corporations, Sen. Orrin Hatch has declared that poor people need to take more responsibility for relieving the country’s debt, because, after all, it would be unfair to tax the “daylights out of everybody around here.” “Everybody around here” presumably refers to Hatch and his fellow senators, who earn $174,000 a year and whose median net worth (as of 2009) was $2.4 million.